Users of electronic mail and messaging systems often want to be notified of an event or other alert, which could be a notification that an e-mail message has been received in a mailbox or be a notification regarding a telephone message, stock quote notification, or other notification regarding a received message. Sometimes a user may have a preferred medium or communications format for receiving the alert, including an e-mail Short Messaging Service (SMS) message, a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) message, or other type of message to be delivered in a communications format that is preferred by the user at the destination or target address.
There have been a number of prior art proposals for solving these problems and providing alerts for events. For example, sometimes an alert is delivered to a distribution engine in an output communications format desired by the user. This distribution engine, however, performs no transformation of an alert into a communications format desired by a user or destination address. Thus, any alert must be input in the desired format. In yet another proposal, the input format to an alert system can originate from a variety of sources, and can be in the form Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), local files, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Structured Query Language (SQL), and other multiple formats. In this prior art proposal, the alert system appears to have access to a user's personal information and settings, but there is not transformation into a desired communications format.
Another drawback is that different manufacturers support different types of alert messages, such as created by WAP gateways. Each brand of wireless mobile communications device often plays an important role in determining the functional features and characteristics of a device, which impacts how an alert is to be received, or whether any alert should be transmitted. Many service providers and other communication system providers view a client string in an attempt to configure a server where other devices support a proper protocol. Alerts are typically to be forwarded to a device. This has not always been found advantageous.